“We are formed by what we desire”
― John Irving, quote from In One Person
“Don't forget this, too: Rumors aren't interested in the unsensational story; rumors don't care what's true.”
― John Irving, quote from In One Person
“And when you love a book, commit one glorious sentence of it-perhaps your favorite sentence-to memory. That way you won't forget the language of the story that moved you to tears.”
― John Irving, quote from In One Person
“Gender mattered a whole lot less to Shakespeare than it seems to matter to us.”
― John Irving, quote from In One Person
“My dear boy, " Miss Frost said sharply. "My dear boy, please don't put a label on me - don't make a category before you get to know me!”
― John Irving, quote from In One Person
“He was one of those people things came easily to, but he did little to demonstrate that he deserved to be gifted.”
― John Irving, quote from In One Person
“All I say is: Let us leave les folles alone; let's just leave them be. Don't judge them. You are not superior to them - don't put them down.”
― John Irving, quote from In One Person
“Most places we leave in childhood grow less, not more, fancy.”
― John Irving, quote from In One Person
“You can learn a lot from your lovers, but-for the most part-you get to keep your friends longer, and you learn more from them.”
― John Irving, quote from In One Person
“Novels are just another kind of cross-dressing, aren't they?”
― John Irving, quote from In One Person
“The time to read Madame Bovary is when your romantic hopes and desires have crashed, and you will believe that your future relationships will have disappointing - even devastating - consequences.”
― John Irving, quote from In One Person
“It happens to many teenagers-that moment when you feel full of resentment or distrust for those adults you once loved unquestioningly.”
― John Irving, quote from In One Person
“You live your life at the time you live it -- you don't have much of an overview when what's happening to you is still happening.”
― John Irving, quote from In One Person
“It doesn't really matter who said it - it's so obviously true. Bevore you can write anything, you have to notice something.”
― John Irving, quote from In One Person
“It is exhausting to be seventeen and not know who you are.”
― John Irving, quote from In One Person
“...where our desires "come from"; that is a dark, winding road.”
― John Irving, quote from In One Person
“...friends were more important than lovers - not least for the fact that friendships generally lasted longer than relationships.”
― John Irving, quote from In One Person
“...there's a limit to enduring admiration being a substitute for love.”
― John Irving, quote from In One Person
“I'll bet every fucking one of your angels is going to be terrifying!”
― John Irving, quote from In One Person
“That's okay," I said. "We're writers. We make things up.”
― John Irving, quote from In One Person
“By '95 - in New York, alone - more Americans had died of AIDS than were killed in Vietnam.”
― John Irving, quote from In One Person
“Nostalgia!" Miss Frost cried. "You´re nostalgic!" She repeated. "Just how old are you, William?" She asked.
"Seventeen, " I told her.
"Seventeen!" Miss Frost cried, as if she'd been stabbed. "Well, William Abbott, if you're nostalgic at seventeen, maybe you are going to be a writer!”
― John Irving, quote from In One Person
“I'm just a woman with a penis!" she would say, her voice rising.”
― John Irving, quote from In One Person
“Of course, everyone is intolerant of something or someone.”
― John Irving, quote from In One Person
“people can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents.”
― John Irving, quote from In One Person
“I'm sure I'll have more to say about the penis word.”
― John Irving, quote from In One Person
“Bill is a fiction writer, but he writes in the first-person voice in a style that is tell-all confessional; in fact, his fiction sounds as much like a memoir as he can make it sound.”
― John Irving, quote from In One Person
“Why do you guys want to take all the mystery away? Isn't the mystery an exciting part of sex?”
― John Irving, quote from In One Person
“You should wait, William," Miss Frost said. "The time to read Madame Bovary is when your romantic hopes and desires have crashed, and you believe that your future relationships will have disappointing - even devastating - consequences.”
― John Irving, quote from In One Person
John Irving
Born place: in Exeter, New Hampshire, The United States
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“You desire to LIVE "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power—how COULD you live in accordance with such indifference? To live—is not that just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life"—how could you do DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa," and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise—and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that BECAUSE you are able to tyrannize over yourselves—Stoicism is self-tyranny—Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the Stoic a PART of Nature?... But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to "creation of the world," the will to the causa prima.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Beyond Good and Evil
“Because it is morning, it is morning, and there is so much to see.”
― Libba Bray, quote from The Sweet Far Thing
“Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.”
― Augustine of Hippo, quote from Confessions
“There seemed a deep sense of life and joy about all; and although no airs blew from out the Heavens, yet everything had motion through the gentle sweepings to and fro of innumberable butterflies, that might have been mistaken for tullips with wings.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales
“The four elements: earth, water, fire and air; the qualities recognized by touch: cold, heat, dryness, and moisture; the temperaments: sanguineous, phlegmatic, choleric, and saturnine; the faculties: natural, animal, and vital.”
― Noah Gordon, quote from The Physician
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The Best of Oprah's...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
